McDonald's is, without question, the most successful, popular, and influential fast-food restaurant chain in recorded history. McDonald's now has 35,000 different locations spanning the globe. Fifty-eight million people dine on McDonald's chow and drink every day. That's 58 million daily consuming their Big Macs, fries, cokes, fish sandwiches, Happy Meals, milkshakes, etc.

The name most commonly associated with McDonald's is definitely Ray Kroc. Kroc was the Chicago entrepreneur who founded the McDonald's corporation, but to suggest Kroc created McDonald's is, well, a crock. (Sorry about that one!)

As is sometimes the case with amazingly successful businesses, the early part of the McDonald's story includes the people who came up with the idea and the person who figured out how to sell the idea to the rest of the world. Ray Kroc was most certainly the latter.

In the early 1950's, Kroc was contentedly employed selling milkshake machines. One of his best clients was a chain of restaurants in southern California run by a pair of brothers, Richard and Maurice McDonald.

Born in New Hampshire, the McDonald brothers moved to California in the 1920s and got into the restaurant business in the late 1930's. They opened a hot dog stand in Arcadia. (That's right folks, the original McDonald's restaurant served hot dogs, not burgers!)

In 1940, they opened McDonald's Barbeque Restaurant in San Bernardino. It did great, but more importantly it taught the brothers some important lessons about the fast-food service industry. The McDonald brothers shut down the restaurant for three months in 1948 to re-tool it.

With a slimmed-down menu and an emphasis on serving the chow as quickly and as cheaply as possible, the highly-mechanized drive-in began churning out 15-cent hamburgers with unprecedented speed. By 1954, the McDonald brothers were operating nine outlets and had sold 21 franchises.

Two legends were already in place- the golden arches and the running tally of how many hamburgers had been sold. (Dick and Mac McDonald had originated the golden arches in 1953, wanting an attractive and appealing hallmark for their restaurants.)

It was then that Ray Kroc came calling. He convinced the McDonald brothers to hire him as their agent. Kroc founded his own corporation soon after and opened his first franchise in Des Plaines, Illinois, on April 15, 1955.

Within five years, McDonald's had opened 100 franchises and sold more than 100,000,000 hamburgers. McDonald's was growing by leaps and bounds, and not only in America. The popular chain soon went international with franchises opening (in order) in Canada, Costa Rica, Panama, Japan, the Netherlands, Germany, Australia, France, El Salvador, and Sweden.

In 1961, Kroc bought the business from the McDonald brothers for $2.7 million dollars. But they lent their name to one of the most identifiable corporate brands on the planet. And few people realize that behind that name stand men who revolutionized food service as radically as Henry Ford revolutionized the production of cars.

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And let's not leave out some more important parts of the story. ray Kroc tried to get the brothers to expand much faster than they did. He wanted to be part of the team, not own it. Ronald rejected the idea, and didn't want to grow any bigger. Kroc thought he was a "clown". After buying the company, Kroc decided to make a clown named Ronald McDonald, in order to show that brother what he thought of him. And thus the famous clown came into being too.

Being in Southern California, I made it a point many many years ago to visit a few of the "original" McDonalds locations. I saw the site of their "Arcadia" hot dog location near the old Monrovia Airport location... and the one in Azusa California which is no longer there.

Very few early McDonald's restaurants remain, largely because McDonald's Corporation required its franchisees to update their buildings. Their original San Bernardino location at 1398 North E Street (since 1940) is in a run down neighborhood - but their third restaraunt, located at 10207 Lakewood Blvd. in Downey, California is still there with the original Golden Arches and the "Speedee" logo. Because of some legal 'franchise worded' contract, McDonalds didn't have complete control over the Downey operation, and thus the menu was slightly different, but well worth the drive to see and take pictures in front of with the employees wearing 50's style uniforms of paper hats, white shirts and bolo ties. After the Northridge earthquake in 1994, and with a lack of a drive-up window and indoor seating, the restaurant was closed. McDonald's wanted to tear it down, but because of the city and the National Trust for Historic Preservation's 1994 list of the 11 Most Endangered Historic Places, McDonald's spent two years restoring the restaurant and reopened it. Customers today can visit the original restaurant and an adjoining gift shop and museum. It's on the list of must-see places after Disneyland and the beaches.

Ahhh... the cool things about living in Southern California... Now Eddie will have to tell us all about "In-and-Out" Hamburgers which is probably better known in our area than McDonalds is!